Allan Guthrie Interviews Ray Banks

On publication of Ray Banks's Donkey Punch, the second novel featuring Leith-born, unofficial-private-investigator Callum Innes, Allan Guthrie spoke to the author for BooksFromScotland.com, touching on subjects as diverse as the cat lady in Santa Monica, being Scottish, and retro-outlining.

AG: Donkey Punch is set in the world of amateur boxing, and involves a teenager from Salford taking part in a tournament in L.A. How did you set about creating the kind of authenticity that makes your fictional world such a credible one?

RB: Well, thanks for that. I don't know that it's credible, though. It just has to be credible enough. I mean, you research enough so you don't get caught in a lie and anything you really don't know, you don't mention and hope the readers round off the edges for you. I'm lucky in that I have incredibly intelligent readers. They're also really good-looking. Plus I have eagle-eyed first readers and my agent is a boxing fan based in Los Angeles. They scoured that book for any errant British idioms, geographical slips or boxing-related screw-ups. So I think I'm safe.

Your previous novels have been set in Manchester. What were the challenges in writing about somewhere so far from home?

It's harder writing about Manchester than it is Los Angeles. I haven't lived in Manchester for six years, but Innes is supposed to know the place reasonably well. It's almost impossible to keep up with the skyline in that city, though – every time I go back, they've demolished something or thrown another building up. It's insane.

But Innes isn't a native of Los Angeles, so I could pretty much describe from an outsider's point of view, complete with any misconceptions that might occur. I have been to LA, and there are some selective moments in the book (the cat lady in Santa Monica, for example – she's real), but there's also a wealth of LA literature to crib from. Besides, I treat places like if there's any resemblance to the real place, that's good enough for me. The background is a sketch. Readers connect to characters, not parking restrictions on a certain street.

Do you have readers in mind when you're writing?

Not on the first draft. The first draft's about getting it down. Not really on the second full draft either – that's more about me, me, me. The third draft tends to be tweaked according to three readers in particular – my wife, my agent and a certain young Scottish novelist who also happened to spoil me by being my first professional editor. If you're asking do I consider all those wonderful people out there in the dark, then the answer's no. I don't know them, so I can't think about them. And I know that sounds awfully pompous, but it's true.

You're a Scot living in England. Your protagonist, Callum Innes, is also a Scot living in England. How much of Callum Innes is Ray Banks?

A lot more than when I started writing him. He's bound to have taken on some of my characteristics. Obviously we have the same sense of humour, some of the same neuroses. I don't drink as much as him, though I used to. And up until recently, I was a diehard smoker. There's also that situational similarity that you've touched upon, and it's something that I'm dealing with in the book I'm currently writing. When I lived in Edinburgh, I was treated as English because of my accent. Which, of course, doesn't necessarily mean I felt very welcome. And I've never felt at home in England, either. So there's a sense of displacement in Cal that I can relate to. Other than all that, he's entirely fictional.

Anyone reading Donkey Punch will quickly notice the dazzling prose. But this is also a very tightly plotted novel. Would you care to talk about how the plot developed its muscles? Steroids?

Just upped my reps and used heavier weights. Long story short – I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I didn't think any further than the first book in the series (Saturday's Child). When I had to write another one, panic kicked in and I started writing something entirely inappropriate and meandering. But then I discovered the joy of outlining (and retro-outlining for clarity). Also, my wife is a major part of the plotting – she'll ask awkward questions that I hate at the time, but which make the finished product seem more organic. And thank you for all those kind words, Guthrie. Cheque's in the post.

With regard to writing, the phrase 'emotional honesty' has been used by and about you. It's something you feel very passionate about. Can you tell us what it means to you and why it's important?

Emotional honesty is – to my mind – the single most important aspect of fiction, regardless of genre or medium. And I know that phrase sounds a little touchy-feely-let's-workshop, but it seems to have stuck. At its best, reading involves delving into your own experience to create senses for a story someone else has conceived – it can be the most personal and participatory one-to-one experience it's possible to have with what is essentially entertainment. And it bugs me when writers don't make something of that or, even worse, insist that all they're doing is "spinning a good yarn". Everyone's out to entertain – otherwise we're not fulfilling one of the main requirements of storytelling, which is to hold the attention - but as a reader, I want blood and bone. I want organic characters, not cut-outs whose emotions exist solely to push the plot forward.

I get passionate about it because I very rarely see true emotional honesty, especially in our genre. And it's sad, because emotional honesty should live in our genre, concerned as it is with human beings at their most morally conflicted. There are some writers who deal with emotional honesty incredibly well, though. Daniel Woodrell springs to mind. Or Ken Bruen. And I can't forget Charles Willeford, whose Hoke Moseley is hands-down one of the greatest characters in any genre.

You're often described as a noir writer, and noir owes a large debt to the Gothic. I can see elements of Robert Louis Stevenson in your writing, from the dark psychology to the very modern, lean style. But also in the Kidnapped-like geographical contrasts in Donkey Punch, and the various examples of duality/polarisation in both your writing. I wondered how much, if at all, you feel part of the Scottish literary tradition.

I have been described as a noir writer, but I don't necessarily agree with that label. I have a very strict (some might say narrow-minded) definition of noir, and the Innes books certainly don't fit comfortably into that wee hole. The whole label thing isn't very helpful; I might want to do a cat mystery one day. One with emotional honesty. I'm sure that'll be a sight.

As for feeling part of the Scottish literary tradition, while I appreciate the comparisons to Stevenson, I don't really feel part of anything, let alone a literary tradition. I'm not saying that to be contrary, either. Maybe I'll feel like I'm part of a literary tradition when my life's work is done, but I don't think it's healthy to look at these things until they can be looked at in retrospect. Even Stevenson wasn't granted Scottish literary tradition status until relatively recently, was he? He'd always been seen as too popular before. Whatever he was, by all means sign me up for the same ride.

So it'd be safe to say you don't feel part of the American tradition either?

Again, tradition, no. But most of my favourite writers are American. I don't know what that says about me, to be honest. I'm very drawn to a culture that places value on both low and high culture; and that line separating them can blur every now and then. I've always seen good genre fiction as having all the depth of literary fiction but with the added bonus of a bloody good plot, and there's a strong element of that in the American tradition, I think.

When did you start writing?

Ages ago. Such a cliché, but I've been writing as long as I can remember. In the early days, I was drawing comics and writing screenplays with a view to becoming a true auteur director, a cross between Scorcese and Fuller. Then I wrote bad teenage poetry and plays in my late teens, early twenties. All that to build up to short stories and novels. A lot of rubbish written, but I hope I learned a few tricks along the way.

How has your career progressed?

I have been incredibly lucky, so I'm a terrible advertisement for a traditional route to publishing. I started with the short stories, mostly online, and didn't have much in the way of rejection until I finished my first (actually third) book, The Big Blind and shopped that around to pretty much unanimous disgust. Then, just before I was going to shelve it, I sent a couple of chapters to a guy who ran a website called Noir Originals (fella goes by the name of Allan Guthrie – maybe you've heard of him). When he became a commissioning editor of a new imprint, he remembered me. I didn't get an advance for that book, which is lucky because I think it sold about two hundred copies in all, but I did get professionally edited, which was really valuable. And The Big Blind did was it was supposed to do - the book got me reviewed, noticed, got me an agent and led to another deal. I'm with Polygon, who are primarily literary, which means I can play around, learn my craft in a public arena. It also means I don't have to write that serial killer book just yet.

What's in the pipeline for you?

At the moment, I have a lot of up-in-the-air projects that aren't book-related. Nothing I can really announce, but very exciting if any of them pan out. On the book front, I've finished the third Innes – provisionally titled No More Heroes and ready to go – and I'm working on the fourth, Beast Of Burden. Then it'll be the last in the series and I'm finished with Cal. After that, I have a tonne of books I want to write. It'll just be a question of whether people are interested in buying 'em. We'll see. I try to remain optimistic.

Allan Guthrie is the author of Hard Man.